By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 23rd, 2024
Cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase is forming its compliance team. Jeff Horowitz is to become the first-ever Crypto Compliance Chief.
World-famous cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase is doing its best to ensure legitimization of crypto assets. At the moment, it is on its way to become a licensed broker-dealer in the U.S. This will help to build a more positive image of this asset class in the eyes of regulators and serious institutional investors that nowadays are gradually beginning to show their interest to the crypto world.
According to the San Francisco-based start-up’s announcement, they will introduce a position of a chief compliance officer and Jeff Horowitz, who has a rich experience in working for banks and regulatory bodies, is to become the first-ever Crypto Compliance Chief.
Previously, Horowitz served as a managing director and global head of compliance at Pershing, which is a subsidiary of BNY Mellon. The company is specialized in brokerage custody, clearing and settlement. He has worked for Pershing for 12 years.
Before joining Pershing, he worked for such major organizations as Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. At his previous positions, Horowitz was dealing with anti-money laundering policies and other kinds of compliance programs.
Owing to his cooperation with industry associations such as the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), Horowitz has also gained experience in development of financial regulations in the U.S.
In the company’s official blog post, Asiff Hirji, Coinbase President and Chief Operating Officer, commented this appointment the following way:
“As Coinbase — along with the cryptocurrency space as a whole — grows and matures, continued regulatory compliance across all the varying jurisdictions globally will be critical. Adding Jeff to our team is one more important step along this journey.”
Hirji also named Horowitz “a uniquely qualified leader” for their team responsible for compliance issues.
Being one of the largest digital currency platforms, Coinbase managed to benefit greatly from the situation when Bitcoin hit $20,000 in 2017. At that time, mostly retail investors were the main clients for such platforms as Coinbase. Though today the prices for cryptos are not so high as they used to be in December, Coinbase is not going to lose its positions. Now it is focused on providing competitive products for institutional investors as well as on expanding its geography and range of services.
During the last months, Coinbase has been seriously working (and its work is still being continued) on the issues of legitimization of crypto assets.
With a view to engage policymakers of the United States to the crypto industry, Coinbase launched its own political action committee (PAC). The team behind the platform hopes that an established dialogue with the politicians who have real influence will help change the general attitude to crypto assets and minimize the level of uncertainty around them caused by the regulatory issues.